What is Live?
Live is software for creating musical ideas, turning them into finished songs, and even taking them onto the stage. With two views - the classic Arrangement View, where musical ideas are laid out along a timeline, and the unique Session View, where you can improvise and quickly experiment with musical ideas - Live is a fast, fun, intuitive way to make music.

Create:
No matter what instruments you use to create, Live helps you get your ideas down quickly. Live's Session View is a musical sketchpad you can use to mix and match musical ideas without the constraints of a timeline. Advanced warping features mean you can change the tempo and timing of any audio, in real time, without stopping the music. Use Live's unique audio-to-MIDI conversion tools to turn drum breaks, guitar lines, or even harmony parts into MIDI patterns that you can edit and reuse with your own sounds. And with Live's Racks you can make creative combinations of instruments and effects and control them with customized macros.

Finish:
From arranging to mixing to mastering, Live has workflows that will help you go from song ideas to finished tracks. You can organize and edit your music in a traditional timeline in Arrangement View, or improvise your way to a finished song, recording everything you do in Session view. And Live has all the tools you need to get your mix or master sounding great - everything from precise EQs to warm, vintage compressors.

Perform:
Live's Session View is the perfect environment for improvising and playing live - everything stays in sync, so you can mix and match audio at any tempo and never have to think about lining things up. Whether you're playing a solo performance with hardware or software instruments, or processing audio with a live band, Live has got everything you need. And it's perfect for jamming hands-on: Live works with any MIDI controller, and you can map knobs, faders, and buttons to control almost anything.

Updates and improvements:
Regular version updates means Live 9 users get new creative tools and features. Live 9.7 brought new slicing features to Simpler, adding to the wealth of new sampling possibilities offered since the 9.5 update. Also in 9.5 were new vintage-sounding analog-modelled filters and improved waveforms and monitoring, while 9.2 added refinements and improvements to Live's audio warping engine and a new Tuner device.

Then there's Link: Ableton's new technology that keeps software in time over a wireless network. Now a built-in feature of Live and a growing number of other applications, it makes playing together with multiple devices a lot simpler.